Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon Part 30

[Footnote 1: _Pterois muricata_, Cuv. and Val. iv. 363. _Scarpaena miles_, Bennett; named, by the Singhalese, "_Maharata-gini_," the Great Red Fire, a very brilliant red species spotted with black. It is very voracious, and is regarded on some parts of the coast as edible, while on others it is rejected.]

[Footnote 2: _Glyphisodon Brownriggii_, Cuv. and Val. v. 484; _Choetodon Brownriggii_, Bennett. A very small fish about two inches long, called _Kaha hartikyha_ by the natives. It is distinct from Choetodon, in which BENNETT placed it. Numerous species of this genus are scattered throughout the Indian Ocean. It derives its name from the fine hair-like character of its teeth. They are found chiefly among coral reefs, and, though eaten, are not much esteemed. In the French colonies they are called "Chauffe-soleil." One species is found on the sh.o.r.es of the New World (_G. saxatalis_), and it is curious that Messrs. QUOY and GAIMARD found this fish at the Cape de Verde Islands in 1827.]

[Footnote 3: This fish has a sharp round spine on the side of the body near the tail; a formidable weapon, which is generally partially concealed within a scabbard-like incision. It raises or depresses this spine at pleasure. The fish is yellow, with several nearly parallel blue stripes on the back and sides; the belly is white, the tail and fins brownish green, edged with blue.

It is found in rocky places; and according to BENNETT, who has figured it in his second plate, it is named _Seweya_. It has been known, however, to all the old ichthyologists, Valentyn, Renard, Seba, Artedi, and has been named _Chaetodon lineatus_, by Linne. It is scarce on the southern coast of Ceylon.]

Of these richly coloured fishes the most familiar in the Indian seas are the _Pteroids_. They are well known on the coast of Africa, and thence eastward to Polynesia; but they do not extend to the west coast of America, and are utterly absent from the Atlantic. The rays of the dorsal and pectoral fins are so elongated, that when specimens were first brought to Europe it was conjectured that these fishes have the faculty of flight, and hence the specific name of "_volitans_" But this is an error, for, owing to the deep incisions between the pectoral rays, the pteroids are wholly unable to sustain themselves in the air. They are not even bold swimmers, living close to the sh.o.r.e and never venturing into the deep sea. Their head is ornamented with a number of filaments and cutaneous appendages, of which one over each eye and another at the angles of the mouth are the most conspicuous. Sharp spines project on the crown and on the side of the gill-apparatus, as in the other sea-perches, _Scorpaena, Serra.n.u.s_, &c., of which these are only a modified and ornate form. The extraordinary expansion of their fins is not, however, accompanied by a similar development of the bones to which they are attached, simply because they appear to have no peculiar function, as in flying fishes, or in those where the spines of the fins are weapons of offence. They attain to the length of twelve inches, and to a weight of about two pounds; they live on small marine animals, and by the Singhalese the flesh (of some at least) is considered good for table. Nine or ten species are known to occur in the East Indian Seas, and of these the one figured above is, perhaps, the most common.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PTEROIS VOLITANS.]

Another species known to occur on the coasts of Ceylon is the _Scorpaena miles_, Bennett, or _Pterois miles_, Gunther[1], of which Bennett has given a figure[2], but it is not altogether correct in some particulars.

[Footnote 1: The fish from the Sea of Pinang, described by Dr. CANTOR with this name (Catal. Mal. Fish. p. 42), is again different, and belongs to a third species.]

[Footnote 2: _Fishes of Ceylon_, Pl. ix.]

In the fishes of Ceylon, however, beauty is not confined to the brilliancy of their tints. In some, as in the _/Scarus harid_, Forsk[1], the arrangement of the scales is so graceful, and the effect is so heightened by modifications of colour, as to present the appearance of tessellation, or mosaic work.

[Footnote 1: This is the fish figured by BENNETT as _Sparus pepo_.

_Fishes of Ceylon_, Plate xxviii.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCARUS HARID. After Bennett.]

_Fresh-water Fishes_.--Of the fresh-water fish, which inhabit the rivers and tanks, so very little has. .h.i.therto been known to naturalists[1], that of nineteen drawings sent home by Major Skinner in 1852, although specimens of well-known genera, Colonel Hamilton Smith p.r.o.nounced nearly the whole to be new and undescribed species.

[Footnote 1: In extenuation of the little that is known of the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon, it may be observed that very few of them are used at table by Europeans, and there is therefore no stimulus on the part of the natives to catch them. The burbot and grey mullet are occasionally eaten, but they taste of mud, and are not in request.

Some years ago the experiment was made, with success, of introducing into Mauritius the _Osphromenus olfax_ of Java, which has also been taken to French Guiana. In both places it is now highly esteemed as a fish for table. As it belongs to a family which possesses the faculty, hereafter alluded to, of surviving in the damp soil after the subsidence of the water in the tanks and rivers, it might with equal advantage be acclimated in Ceylon. It grows to 20 lbs. weight and upwards.]

Of eight of these, which were from the Mahawelliganga, and caught in the vicinity of Kandy, five were carps; two were _Leucisci_, and one a _Mastacembelus_ (_M. armatus_, Lacep); one was an _Ophiocephalus_, and one a _Polyacanthus_, with no serrae on the gills. Six were from the Kalanyganga, close to Colombo, of which two were _Helostoma_, in shape approaching the Chaetodon; two _Ophiocephali_, one a _Silurus_, and one an _Anabas_, but the gills were without denticulation. From the still water of the lake, close to the walls of Colombo, there were two species of _Eleotris_, one _Silurus_ with barbels, and two _Malacopterygians_, which appear to be _Bagri_.

The _fresh-water Perches_ of Europe and of the North of America are represented in Ceylon and India by several genera, which bear to them a great external similarity (_Lates, Therapon_). They have the same habits as their European allies, and their flesh is considered equally wholesome, but they appear to enter salt-water, or at least brackish water, more freely. It is, however, in their internal organisation that they differ most from the perches of Europe; their skeletons are composed of fewer vertebrae, and the air bladder of the _Therapon_ is divided into two portions, as in the carps. Four species at least of this genus inhabit the lakes and rivers of Ceylon, and one of them, of which a figure is given above, has been but imperfectly described in any ichthyological work[1]; it attains to the length of seven inches.

[Footnote 1: Holocentrus quadrilineatus, _Bloch_. It is allied to _Helotes polytoenia_, Bleek., from Halmaheira which it can be readily distinguished by having only five or six blackish longitudinal bands, the black humeral spot being between the first and second; another blackish blotch is in the spinous dorsal fin. There are two specimens in the British Museum collection, one of which has recently arrived from Amoy; of the other the locality is unknown. See GuNTHER, _Acanthopt.

Fishes_, vol. i. p. 282, where mention of the black humeral spot has been omitted.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THERAPON QUADRILINEATUS.]

In addition to marine eels, in which the Indian coasts abound, Ceylon has some true fresh-water eels, which never enter the sea. These are known to the natives under the name of _Theliya_, and to naturalists by that of _Mastacembelus_. They have sometimes in ichthyological systems been referred to the s...o...b..idae and other marine families, from the circ.u.mstance that the dorsal fin anteriorly is composed of spines. But, in addition to the general shape of the body, their affinity to the eel is attested, by their confluent fins, by the absence of ventral fins, by the structure of the mouth and its dent.i.tion, by the apparatus of the gills, which opens with an inferior slit, and above all by the formation of the skeleton itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: See GuNTHER'S _Acanthopt. Fishes_, vol. iii. (Family Mastacembelidae).]

Their skin is covered with minute scales, coated by a slimy exudation, and the upper jaw is produced into a soft tripart.i.te tentacle, with which they are enabled to feel for their prey in the mud. They are very tenacious of life, and belong, without doubt, to those fishes which in Ceylon descend during the drought into the muddy soil.[1] Their flesh very much resembles that of the eel; and is highly esteemed.[2] They were first made known to European naturalists by Russell[3], who brought to Europe from the rivers round Aleppo specimens, some of which are still preserved in the collection of the British Museum. Aleppo is the most western point of their geographical range, the group being mainly confined to the East-Indian continent and its islands.

In Ceylon only one species appears to occur, the

[Footnote 1: See post, p. 351.]

[Footnote 2: CUV. and VAL., _Hist. Poiss._ vol. iii. p. 459.]

[Footnote 3: _Nat. Hist. Aleppo_, 2nd edit. Lond. 1794, vol. ii. p. 208, pl. vi.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MASTACEMBELUS ARMATUS]

_Mastacembelus armatus_.[1] The back is armed with from thirty-five to thirty-nine short, stout spines; there being three others before the a.n.a.l fin. The ground colour of the fish is brown, and the head has two rather irregular longitudinal black bands; deep-brown spots run along the back as well as along the dorsal and a.n.a.l fins; and the sides are ornamented with irregular and reticulated brown lines. This eel attains to the length of two feet. The old females do not show any markings, being of a uniform brown colour.

[Footnote 1: Macrognathus armatus, _Lacep._; Mastacembelus armatus, _Cuv., Val._]

In the collection of Major Skinner, before alluded to, brought together without premeditation, the naturalist will be struck by the preponderance of those genera which are adapted by nature to endure, a temporary privation of moisture; and this, taken in connection with the vicissitudes affecting the waters they inhabit, exhibits a surprising ill.u.s.tration of the wisdom of the Creator in adapting the organisation of his creatures to the peculiar circ.u.mstances under which they are destined to exist.

So abundant are fish in all parts of the island, that Knox says, not the running streams alone, but the reservoirs and ponds, "nay, every ditch and little plash of water but ankle deep hath fish in it."[1] But many of these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust, and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping apertures; yet within a very few days after the change of the monsoon, the natives are busily engaged in fishing in those very spots and in the hollows contiguous to them, although the latter are entirely unconnected with any pool or running streams. Here they fish in the same way which Knox described nearly 200 years ago, with a funnel-shaped basket, open at bottom and top, "which,"

as he says, "they jibb down, and the end sticks in the mud, which often happens upon a fish; which, when they feel beating itself against the sides, they put in their hands and take it out, and reive a ratan through their gills, and so let them drag after them."[2]

[Footnote 1: Knox's _Historical Relation of Ceylon,_ Part i. ch. vii.

The occurrence of fish in the most unlooked-for situations, is one of the mysteries of other eastern countries as well as Ceylon and India. In Persia irrigation is carried on to a great extent by means of wells sunk in line in the direction in which it is desired to lead a supply of water, and these are connected by channels, which are carefully arched over to protect them from evaporation. These _kanats,_ as they are called, are full of fish, although neither they nor the wells they unite have any connection with streams or lakes.]

[Footnote 2: Knox, _Historical Relation of Ceylon_, Part i. ch vi.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM KNOX'S CEYLON, A.D. 1681]

This operation may be seen in the lowlands, traversed by the high road leading from Colombo to Kandy. Before the change of the monsoon, the hollows on either side of the highway are covered with dust or stunted gra.s.s; but when flooded by the rains, they are immediately resorted to by the peasants with baskets, constructed precisely as Knox has stated, in which the fish are entrapped and taken out by the hand.[1]

[Footnote 1: As anglers, the native Singhalese exhibit little expertness; but for fishing the rivers, they construct with singular ingenuity fences formed of strong stakes, protected by screens of ratan, that stretch diagonally across the current; and along these the fish are conducted into a series of enclosures from which retreat is impracticable. MR. LAYARD, in the _Magazine of Natural History_ for May, 1853, has given a diagram of one of these fish "corrals," as they are called, of which a copy is shown on the next page.]

So singular a phenomenon as the sudden re-appearance of full-grown fishes in places that a few days before had been encrusted with hardened clay, has not failed to attract attention; but the European residents have been content to explain it by hazarding conjectures, either that the sp.a.w.n must have lain imbedded in the dried earth till released by the rains, or that the fish, so unexpectedly discovered, fall from the clouds during the deluge of the monsoon.

As to the latter conjecture; the fall of fish during showers, even were it not so problematical in theory, is too rare an event to account for the punctual appearance of those found in the rice-fields, at stated periods of the year. Both at Galle and Colombo in the south-west monsoon, fish are popularly believed to have fallen from the clouds during violent showers, but those found on the occasions that give rise to this belief, consist of the smallest fry, such as could be caught up by waterspouts, and vortices a.n.a.logous to them, or otherwise blown on sh.o.r.e from the surf; whereas those which suddenly appear in the replenished tanks and in the hollows which they overflow, are mature and well-grown fish.[1] Besides, the latter are found, under the circ.u.mstances I have described, in all parts of the interior, whilst the prodigy of a supposed fall of fish from the sky has been noticed, I apprehend, only in the vicinity of the sea, or of some inland water.

[Footnote 1: I had an opportunity, on one occasion only, of witnessing the phenomenon which gives rise to this popular belief. I was driving in the cinnamon gardens near the fort of Colombo, and saw a violent but partial shower descend at no great distance before me. On coming to the spot I found a mult.i.tude of small silvery fish from one and a half to two inches in length, leaping on the gravel of the high road, numbers of which I collected and brought away in my palankin. The spot was about half a mile from the sea, and entirely unconnected with any watercourse or pool.

Mr. Whiting, who was many years resident in Trincomadie, writes me that he "had often been told by the natives on that side of the island that it sometimes rained fishes; and on one occasion" (he adds) "I was taken by them, in 1849, to a field at the village of Karrancotta-tivo, near Batticaloa, which was dry when I pa.s.sed over it in the morning, but, had been covered in two hours by sudden rain to the depth of three inches, in which there was then a quant.i.ty of small fish. The water had no connection with any pond or stream whatsoever." Mr. Cripps, in like manner, in speaking of Galle, says: "I have seen in the vicinity of the fort, fish taken from rain-water that had acc.u.mulated in the hollow parts of land that in the hot season are perfectly dry and parched. The place is accessible to no running stream or tank; and either the fish or the sp.a.w.n from which they were produced, must of necessity have fallen with the rain."

Mr. J. PRINSEP, the eminent secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, found a fish in the pulviometer at Calcutta, in 1838.--_Journ. Asiat.

Soc. Bengal_, vol. vi. p. 465.

A series of instances in which fishes have been found on the continent of India under circ.u.mstances which lead to the conclusion that they must have fallen from the clouds, have been collected by the late Dr. BUIST of Bombay, and will be found in the appendix to this chapter.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FISH CORRAL]

The surmise of the buried sp.a.w.n is one sanctioned by the very highest authority. Mr. Yarrell in his "_History of British Fishes_," adverting to the fact that ponds (in India) which had been previously converted into hardened mud, are replenished with small fish in a very few days after the commencement of each rainy season, offers this solution of the problem as probably the true one: "The impregnated ova of the fish of one rainy season are left unhatched in the mud through the dry season, and from their low state of organisation as ova, the vitality is preserved till the recurrence, and contact of the rain and oxygen in the next wet season, when vivification takes place from their joint influence."[1]

[Footnote 1: YARRELL, _History of British Fishes_, introd. vol. i. p.

xxvi. This too was the opinion of Aristotle, _De Respiratione_, c. ix.]

This hypothesis, however, appears to have been advanced upon imperfect data; for although some fish, like the salmon, sc.r.a.pe grooves in the sand and place their sp.a.w.n in inequalities and fissures; yet as a general rule sp.a.w.n is deposited not beneath but on the surface of the ground or sand over which the water flows, the adhesive nature of each egg supplying the means of attachment. But in the Ceylon tanks not only is the surface of the soil dried to dust after the evaporation of the water, but earth itself, twelve or eighteen inches deep, is converted into sun-burnt clay, in which, although the eggs of mollusca, in their calcareous covering, are in some instances preserved, it would appear to be as impossible for the ova of fish to be kept from decomposition as for the fish themselves to sustain life. Besides, moisture in such situations is only to be found at a depth to which sp.a.w.n could not be conveyed by the parent fish, by any means with which we are yet acquainted.

But supposing it possible to carry the sp.a.w.n sufficiently deep, and to deposit it safely in the mud below, which is still damp, whence it could be liberated on the return of the rains, a considerable interval would still be necessary after the replenishing of the ponds with water to admit of vivification and growth. Yet so far from this interval being allowed to elapse, the rains have no sooner fallen than the taking of the fish commences, and those captured by the natives in wicker cages are mature and full grown instead of being "small fish" or fry, as supposed by Mr. Yarrell.